Sierra Leone ace female sprinter, Hafsatu Kamara has admitted that even though the country’s Rio 2016 Olympics journey has ended they’ve paved a new pathway for sport ahead of future competitions.

Kamara successfully qualified to round one after winning the 100m sprint heat 1 clocking 12. 24 in the preliminaries, but she was unable to progress to the semi-finals due to her late start from the block that led her to finish in 8th place out of 8 athletes in heat 2 with a time of 12.22 .

Shortly after her event she stated: “I want to thank all my fans especially those in Sierra Leone for your constant support and encouragement. A dream of mine that started many years ago is what I’m experiencing now. I’m blessed to represent a country like Sierra Leone during this journey”.

“To my fellow team mates, (Osman Kamara, Bunturabie Jalloh, and Ismail Kamara) I want to encourage you all to continue with training and make sure you maintain the time and records you’ve registered here, so that you work on them for future Games.

“Although our journeys as athletes of the Rio 2016 Olympics Games has come to an end but a new pathway has been paved by us for sport development towards a better and bright future that will see us compete instead of participating in such Games”, Kamara stressed.

In addition to that, 18 year old swimmer Bunturabie Jalloh said participating in the Olympics is every athlete’s dream because whether you win medals or not you are an Olympian. And it is a title no one can take from you as long as you attend the Games.

“I am very delighted to represent my country and compete in the 50m Freestyle event which gave me the opportunity to showcase my talent to the whole world, even though I was unable to qualify to the semi-finals.

“And I do believe that swimming enthusiasts can now testify that Sierra Leoneans can swim,” Jalloh averred.

She called on authorities concerned about sport to provide athletes with standard and durable facilities and equipment’s for training purposes and local competitions so that when they go out to represent the country they won’t find it strange.

Speaking to Ishmail Dudu Kamara immediately after his race he said he was not comfortable with his performance because he was expecting to do more than that.

“I gave it everything. I ran as fast as I could to put me in contention. Unfortunately, it just wasn’t there in the last 5m.” Hopefully I can work on that in the next 4 years and come back and give those guys a good fight,” he said.

Kamara finished in 4th place clocking 10.95 seconds and he was ranked 9th out of 21 competitors that competed in the 100m men’s preliminaries.